Mechanism behind squids' and octopuses' ability to change color revealed

Mechanism behind squids' and octopuses' ability to change color revealed

Melting in the Afar helps scientists understand how oceans form

Melting in the Afar helps scientists understand how oceans form

Warm ocean drives most Antarctic ice shelf loss

Warm ocean drives most Antarctic ice shelf loss

Where trash accumulates in the deep sea

A young rockfish hides out in a discarded shoe, 472 meters (1,548 feet) deep

 in San Gabriel Canyon, off Southern California. (Credit: ©2010 MBARI)

  Where trash accumulates in the deep sea

June 5, 2013 — Surprisingly large amounts of discarded trash end up in the ocean. Plastic bags, aluminum cans, and fishing debris not only clutter our beaches, but accumulate in open-ocean areas such as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." Now, a paper by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) shows that trash is also accumulating in the deep sea, particularly in Monterey Canyon.

The Arctic Ocean is rapidly accumulating carbon
dioxide owing to perturbations in the global
carbon cycle and particularly to increases in
anthropogenic carbon concentrations. This is
resulting in a decline in seawater pH, so-called
ocean acidification.
Increasing ocean acidification and warming of
the ocean will cause changes in the ecological and
biogeochemical coupling in the Arctic Ocean,
influencing the Arctic marine ecosystem at all
scales. Ocean acidification is expected to affect
marine food chains and fish stocks and thus the
commercial, subsistence, and recreational fisheries
in the Arctic. There is a need for a better understanding
of the nature and scope of these changes
and of the resilience of the ecosystem to the
changing carbon chemistry of the Arctic Ocean.
In addition, given the importance of the Arctic
Ocean as a regulator of global climate, there is a
need to understand the implications of the changing
role of the Arctic on the global carbon cycle.

SEAPLEX Garbage Plastic Patch in the Pacific

SEAPLEX
http://sio.ucsd.edu/Expeditions/Seaplex/

SEAPLEX

Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition

Seeking the Science of the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch